The Scarecrow and the Unicorn
by Night Monkey
Summary: The Scarecrow returns home after a successful Halloween, and discovers he may not be done with masks quite yet. In fact, the Mad Hatter insists he isn't.


I do like me a good Halloween fic, and in keeping with tradition, I proudly present a Batman Halloween fic starring the one and only Jonathan Crane. With a bonus appearance by Jervis Tetch. And some slash between them. Happy Halloween.

* * *

The night had been a roaring success. Or perhaps _screaming_ success would be a better, more accurate way to phrase it. Regardless of word choice, Jonathan Crane was happy.

Exhausted, and a bit bruised where Batman had gotten in one good punch before Crane had slipped into his created chaos, but never-the-less happy.

With one hand on his ribs, where the skin was no doubt an eggplant shade of purple by now, Crane fished around in his pocket for his key. He kept immaculately neat pockets, like he kept everything else he owned or came into contact with, and it didn't take him long to find the slippery key. He slid it into the lock, opened the door, and entered his dark lair.

It wouldn't do to go bashing into a lab table and knocking his precious chemicals everywhere—there was nothing like toxic asphyxiation to kill a good mood—so Crane felt for the light switch. His fingers found it after some groping, and Crane flicked on the overhead lights.

As expected, the lab was as he'd left it. His bottles firmly stoppered, his chemicals labeled and sorted, his notes stacked, his chair occupied by the Mad Hatter.

Wait...

His chair occupied by the Mad Hatter?!

"Frabjous Halloween, Jonathan!" Jervis chirped.

"Halloween ended three hours ago, Tetch. Now it's November, and I'm tired. What are you doing here? And how did you get in? The door was locked," Crane said.

"But the window was open."

Crane looked over to the window. It was open. And broken. Tetch had obviously smashed it with something, then reached inside to unlatch it. Given his oblivious nature, it was lucky he hadn't cut himself on the glass. He would have bled all over the lab, contaminating everything, without a thought to quell the bleeding. Crane probably would have walked in to find him passed out or dead.

"I see. Well, it's been excellent, catching up. Go home," Crane said.

"But Jonathan! I've been waiting all night. And I've prepared a surprise for you," Jervis protested.

Crane pulled his mask off. "I don't like surprises."

"You'll like this one."

"Is it a surprise?"

"Yes!"

"Then I won't like it."

"Oh, Jonathan, if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic," Tetch replied.

Crane felt an embryo of a headache settle between his eyes. It was far, far too early in the day for Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

"Tetch, I am giving you one very generous chance to leave peacefully. There's the door; use it. Feel free to come back and chat...oh, next year. I may be ready for it by then."

The Hatter frowned. "Please, Jonathan? Please? I just want to make you happy."

The irony was thick enough to pour over pancakes. The only thing Tetch had to do to make Crane happy was to hop his stubby little self down from the chair, and to walk away. Yet that was precisely the thing he refused to do! Instead he sat there, flashing Crane hurt puppy eyes.

"If you promise, swear on Alice and Wonderland and that purple cat with the smile, that after you show me this cursed surprise you will leave me in peace, fine. Do it. Whatever."

Jervis' face exploded into a radiant smile. "Thank you, Jonathan. Now, just a moment." The Hatter reached behind his back and, from seemingly thin air, produced a pair of masks. One mask was feline, the rich, yellow-brown of dry savanna grass, and finely detailed, down to the whiskers. The other was pure white except for a golden horn jutting from the forehead.

"That's very nice, but I have my mask right here." Crane raised his scarecrow mask, and to make sure the message was received, he poked at it with the other hand.

"And it's a lovely mask. But these are a lion and a unicorn."

"Two animals I've never had a desire to dress up as. Not that there's any animal I've ever had a proclivity to pretend to be."

"But it's Halloween. You simply must!"

"No, Tetch, it isn't. Let me repeat myself: it is the first of November. I am exhausted. And now that I've seen your masks, you're leaving. Be gone before I throw you out the way you came in."

"Is that really all you want from tonight, Jonathan? Nothing but dreaming as the days go by, dreaming as the summers die?"

"Summer is dead, Jervis, and so are you if you don't leave."

Jervis' manic smile evaporated. He dropped the masks onto Crane's lab table and, head hung low, headed for the door. Crane held the door open until the Hatter was gone, and then slammed the door and locked it.

Now that he was alone, Crane's first order of business was to see what Tetch had done to his window. He examined the damage, and declared the window a total loss. All the panes were shattered on the floor, and while it wasn't a particularly bitter night, it was still well into fall, and Crane's heating was shoddy. There was no way to repair the glass, so the best Crane could do was to find a sheet of plastic and duct-tape it up over the hole. It was far from insulated, but it would hopefully keep out the wind.

Having weatherproofed his lair best he could, Crane's next and final plan for the night was to crawl into bed, wrap himself in his sparse sheets, and try to pretend Jervis hadn't been a sour note at the end of a perfect Halloween. As he headed out of his lab, Crane passed the table that held the abandoned masks. His eyes flitted to the pair of masks, and before he could dissuade himself, he was sitting down, the lion mask in his hand.

Wherever Tetch had gotten the masks, whether he'd made them himself, had them made for him, or had come across them, the quality suggested they hadn't been mass-manufactured in China or Vietnam. Crane ran a finger down the face of the mask. It felt like suede, soft and organic. The lion's nose was dark velveteen. Someone had put a lot of work into the lion and the unicorn, that was for sure.

Crane flipped the mask over. He carefully examined the surface of the mask. The back was unadorned, though Crane paid more attention to it than he had the front. And for good reason.

Blindly accepting gifts from the Mad Hatter was more dangerous than accepting giant wooden horses from Greeks. At worst, a horde of enemy soldiers could burst from the belly of the Trojan Horse. The recipient of Tetch's gifts could find his mind completely under the thrall of a psychotic bibliophile who had a penchant for dressing his mind-controlled zombies up like walruses, carpenters, and dodos.

Try as he might, Crane failed to find any sort of circuitry or wiring on the mask. The mask was quite thin, so it was unlikely Tetch had managed to hollow a space out and fill it with brainwashing gear. Without access to an x-ray machine, Crane couldn't be completely sure the mask was free of any mind-robbing tricks, but he was leaning towards it being clean.

Crane turned the mask around again and looked at the leonine face. He fingered the thin rubber band that would hold the mask in place should he put it on. Not that he planned to, with the whole risk of mind control.

And the simple silliness of it. He was the Scarecrow, not the Cowardly Lion. He didn't do furry costumes.

Crane pressed the mask to his face and slid the band over his head. He didn't feel any tingling in his brain, nor any desire to kidnap blonde girls or drink tea. Good, the mask hadn't been booby-trapped. And now that he was sure, his brain could stop wondering, and he could go to sleep before it become November 2nd.

Crane's hand was nearly on the mask when a crash, followed by the rattling of plastic sheeting, startled him. He whirled around and managed to locate the source of the ruckus without too much effort.

Jervis Tetch, looking like an impending victim of Dexter, was wrapped in the plastic sheeting that had been serving as Crane's window. He squirmed and tried to throw off the sheet, but couldn't seem to get any useful limbs free. He stopped struggling and gave Crane a sheepish smile.

"A little help, Jonathan?"

"Why are you here, and why do you insist on coming through my window?" Crane asked.

"Because you locked the door," Tetch replied.

"Then why didn't you just stay out? It's simple logic, Tetch! I threw you out, ergo I don't want you, ergo you, unless you want a dose of fear gas, stay out!"

"But you've got your mask on. And if you're the lion, you need a unicorn," Tetch said.

"I don't need any such thing. I need sleep, which I cannot have while you're here breaking and entering and making noise."

Instead of untangling Tetch from his plastic straitjacket, Crane grabbed two handfuls of sheet and began to lug it, and its cocooned passenger, across the floor. He let go of the sheet long enough to unlock and open the door, and then finished dragging it outside. Once he was standing on the doorstep, Crane yanked the sheet and it unwound like a yoyo on a string. Tetch was rolled out and tumbled twice before coming to a stop.

The Hatter shook his head to clear it and then stood up. "Thank you."

Crane scowled at him and extended one bony index, which he jabbed into the night. "You are _not_ welcome. I am giving you one last chance to leave unharmed. And this is it. Go."

Tetch sniffled but nodded. He turned away from Crane's hideout, took a step, and...

Like a cat that decided it didn't want to go outside after all, thank you very much, Tetch swiveled around, ducked underneath Crane's arms, and scurried back inside. He applied the brakes just enough to snatch the unicorn mask from the table and slide it on, and then went careening around the lab, singing loudly:

_"The Lion and the Unicorn were fighting for the crown! __The Lion beat the Unicorn all round the town!" _

Crane shouted, "I don't need any crown to encourage me to beat you!"

Though Jervis was at a major disadvantage physically when it came to running, he had a bag of tricks that made up for his short legs. He was able to slide under tables, where Crane was forced to either run around them, or try to vault them, which, after the first banged kneecap, he didn't try again. Tetch was also remarkably difficult to keep a hold on, having no problem sloughing off his over-sized coat when Crane grabbed the garment.

"Hold still before I permanently cripple you!" Crane snarled.

"My dear, here we must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere you must run twice as fast as that," Tetch replied.

This was worse than herding cats. Or children. Or anything else small and irritating that couldn't be told, cajoled, or threatened into behaving. And Crane was sick of it. If he'd known returning to his lair meant having to chase the Mad Hatter around, he never would have come home at all. He would have found a nice overpass, kicked out its resident hobos, and then then slept on the concrete.

It was too late to give up now, though. If Tetch was allowed to win once, that would be the end of it.

Thinking back to how Tetch had gotten wrapped up in the plastic sheet, Crane was struck by an idea. He still had Tetch's coat, which was plenty of material for what Crane had planned. Holding the coat almost like a matador's cape, Crane feigned a grab for Tetch. When the Hatter darted just out of reach, Crane threw the coat on him like a net.

His vision obscured, Jervis had no choice but to stop. He struggled with the coat and had nearly fought his way free when Crane tackled him. The impact with the floor failed to dislodge the coat, but it did knock Jervis' mask askew. Now double-blind, he was reduced to flailing. That ended quickly enough when Crane grasped both flailing sleeves of the coat and used them like rope to tightly bind Jervis.

Once Jervis was wrapped like a mummy, Crane pulled the coat off his face. The unicorn mask, still aslant, kept Jervis from seeing the murderous look on Crane's face. Crane straightened the mask, restoring Jervis' sight, and the Hatter looked up at him with apprehension.

"You never did know when you'd taken things too far. Impulse control, Tetch, that was always your problem. One of them, anyway. Another was your poor decision-making. I gave you every opportunity to leave, and you decided to stay. To run around my lab like a child off his medication. To bring these preposterous masks into the equation." Crane tweaked the unicorn mask's horn with a finger.

"What are you going to do to me, Jonathan?" Jervis asked.

"Exactly what you hoped I'd do ever since you crawled through my window," Crane replied.

Despite the fact he was bound in his own coat and the Scarecrow was looming over him, Jervis risked a grin. "What a fight we might have for the crown, now!"

Crane pulled the arms of the coat tighter, making Jervis wince. "I should win easy."

"I'm not so sure of that," Jervis wheezed, though he knew the unicorn had no chance. He couldn't resist teasing Crane, even at his own peril.

"I'm sure enough for the both of us."

Crane stood up and took hold of Jervis' coat. For a moment, Jervis thought Crane was going to put him out like a bad dog again. Only this time Crane wasn't pulling him towards the door.

"Where are we going?" Jervis asked.

"No, no! The adventures first, explanations take such a dreadful time," Crane replied.

As Jervis would soon learn, adventure could take some time, too. Though it was anything but dreadful.

* * *

The End

As per usual, some of Jervis' (and Jonathan's) lines come from the works of Lewis Carroll.

And thanks for reading.


End file.
